Rome Newsroom, May 18, 2025 / 10:00 am (CNA).
Pope Leo XIV delivered this homily at the Mass for the Initiation of the Petrine Ministry in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday, May 18, after being elected the 266th successor of St. Peter on May 8.
Dear Brother Cardinals,
Brother Bishops and Priests,
Distinguished Authorities and Members of the Diplomatic Corps,
Greetings to the pilgrims who came on the occasion of the Jubilee of the Confraternities!
Brothers and Sisters, I greet all of you with a heart full of gratitude at the beginning of the ministry that has been entrusted to me. Saint Augustine wrote: “Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you” (Confessions, I: 1,1).
In these days, we have experienced intense emotions. The death of Pope Francis filled our hearts with sadness. In those difficult hours, we felt like the crowds that the Gospel says were “like sheep without a shepherd” (Mt 9:36). Yet on Easter Sunday, we received his final blessing and, in the light of the resurrection, we experienced the days that followed in the certainty that the Lord never abandons his people, but gathers them when they are scattered and guards them “as a shepherd guards his flock” (Jer 31:10).
In this spirit of faith, the College of Cardinals met for the conclave. Coming from different backgrounds and experiences, we placed in God’s hands our desire to elect the new Successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome, a shepherd capable of preserving the rich heritage of the Christian faith and, at the same time, looking to the future, in order to confront the questions, concerns, and challenges of today’s world. Accompanied by your prayers, we could feel the working of the Holy Spirit, who was able to bring us into harmony, like musical instruments, so that our heartstrings could vibrate in a single melody.
I was chosen, without any merit of my own, and now, with fear and trembling, I come to you as a brother, who desires to be the servant of your faith and your joy, walking with you on the path of God’s love, for he wants us all to be united in one family.
Love and unity: these are the two dimensions of the mission entrusted to Peter by Jesus.
We see this in today’s Gospel, which takes us to the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus began the mission he received from the Father: to be a “fisher” of humanity in order to draw it up from the waters of evil and death. Walking along the shore, he had called Peter and the other first disciples to be, like him, “fishers of men.” Now, after the resurrection, it is up to them to carry on this mission, to cast their nets again and again, to bring the hope of the Gospel into the “waters” of the world, to sail the seas of life so that all may experience God’s embrace.
How can Peter carry out this task? The Gospel tells us that it is possible only because his own life was touched by the infinite and unconditional love of God, even in the hour of his failure and denial. For this reason, when Jesus addresses Peter, the Gospel uses the Greek verb agapáo, which refers to the love that God has for us, to the offering of himself without reserve and without calculation. Whereas the verb used in Peter’s response describes the love of friendship that we have for one another.
Consequently, when Jesus asks Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” (Jn 21:16), he is referring to the love of the Father. It is as if Jesus said to him, “Only if you have known and experienced this love of God, which never fails, will you be able to feed my lambs. Only in the love of God the Father will you be able to love your brothers and sisters with that same ‘more’, that is, by offering your life for your brothers and sisters.”
Peter is thus entrusted with the task of “loving more” and giving his life for the flock. The ministry of Peter is distinguished precisely by this self-sacrificing love, because the Church of Rome presides in charity and its true authority is the charity of Christ. It is never a question of capturing others by force, by religious propaganda or by means of power. Instead, it is always and only a question of loving as Jesus did.
The Apostle Peter himself tells us that Jesus “is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, and has become the cornerstone” (Acts 4:11). Moreover, if the rock is Christ, Peter must shepherd the flock without ever yielding to the temptation to be an autocrat, lording it over those entrusted to him (cf. 1 Pet 5:3). On the contrary, he is called to serve the faith of his brothers and sisters, and to walk alongside them, for all of us are “living stones” (1 Pet 2:5), called through our baptism to build God’s house in fraternal communion, in the harmony of the Spirit, in the coexistence of diversity. In the words of Saint Augustine: “The Church consists of all those who are in harmony with their brothers and sisters and who love their neighbor” (Serm. 359,9).
Brothers and sisters, I would like that our first great desire be for a united Church, a sign of unity and communion, which becomes a leaven for a reconciled world.
In this our time, we still see too much discord, too many wounds caused by hatred, violence, prejudice, the fear of difference, and an economic paradigm that exploits the Earth’s resources and marginalizes the poorest. For our part, we want to be a small leaven of unity, communion, and fraternity within the world. We want to say to the world, with humility and joy: Look to Christ! Come closer to him! Welcome his word that enlightens and consoles! Listen to his offer of love and become his one family: in the one Christ, we are one. This is the path to follow together, among ourselves but also with our sister Christian churches, with those who follow other religious paths, with those who are searching for God, with all women and men of good will, in order to build a new world where peace reigns!
This is the missionary spirit that must animate us; not closing ourselves off in our small groups, nor feeling superior to the world. We are called to offer God’s love to everyone, in order to achieve that unity which does not cancel out differences but values the personal history of each person and the social and religious culture of every people.
Brothers and sisters, this is the hour for love! The heart of the Gospel is the love of God that makes us brothers and sisters. With my predecessor Leo XIII, we can ask ourselves today: If this criterion “were to prevail in the world, would not every conflict cease and peace return?” (Rerum Novarum, 21).
With the light and the strength of the Holy Spirit, let us build a Church founded on God’s love, a sign of unity, a missionary Church that opens its arms to the world, proclaims the word, allows itself to be made “restless” by history, and becomes a leaven of harmony for humanity.
Together, as one people, as brothers and sisters, let us walk towards God and love one another.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
“Brothers and sisters, this is the hour for love! The heart of the Gospel is the love of God that makes us brothers and sisters.”
And the desire to overcome our disordered inclinations to sin, by our acceptance of Salvational Love, God’s Gift Of Grace and Mercy, available to all those who desire to repent and believe The Good News🙏✝️💕🌹
At a rather basic level this homily might be interpreted as motherhood and apple pie.
Meanwhile, in the jaded secularized world. the world in seach of something beyond just being nice and kind and the rest…
Assuming the reference to «love» goes beyond that and encompasses a love prepared to square up to error, a love that is not soft and compromising, the kind of tough love St Augustine might have understood…
Have much of the same thoughts on the homily. Will need to wait for specific actions, decision, etc., Pope XIV take to see where his papacy intend to lead the Church, hoping he is listening to the Holy Spirit.
It is deeply moving to see the name Leo shine again on the Chair of Peter. One cannot help but recall Leo XIII—firmly rooted in doctrine, yet boldly looking outward. Perhaps it is too soon to draw parallels, but the inaugural homily of Leo XIV already echoes that enduring balance: love without softness, unity without erasure, truth without triumphalism.
Some may hope that this new pontificate will carry forward the best intuitions of Pope Francis, especially the insistence that the Church not dominate but serve. And indeed, Leo XIV, even in his first appearance, did not “impose” himself—he simply let joy and warmth pass through. As a French writer observed, his humour seemed to inscribe the image of a good shepherd directly into the hearts of men and women across the world.
Yet, beyond style, his words hint at something deeper. “Do you love me?”—Christ’s question to Peter—is asked not at the moment of Peter’s greatness, but after his denial. That is the paradox of all true Christian authority: not earned by strength, but entrusted through mercy.
In that light, I’m reminded of a thought attributed to St. Bernard: that the devil chose independence with misery over dependence with joy. It is the ancient lie—Milton’s proud angel declaring it better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven. But how different is St. Joseph, who chose subordination in the hypostatic order—father to the Son—over preeminence in any creaturely hierarchy.
In our world too, it may be better to be a faithful contributor in a Catholic journal than a star in a secular one; better to be a leaven than the loaf. If the Church is to be salt and light again, perhaps it must begin by kneeling, not by declaring. And if Leo XIV leads from his knees, I for one will follow with hope.
“Let us therefore love the Lord our God and let us love His Church; let us love Him as our Father and her as our mother.”
—St. Augustine, On the Psalms
Yes, he is looking, talking, and dressing as a pope, and I have missed that.
Anything said to date is agreeable to most Catholics, and a very few things have been said in generalities that are seen as pleasing to either of extreme conservatives or progressives.
I await to see whom he appoints, whom he leaves in place, and most particularly, await to see what he does, before forming an opinion, but he is off to a nice start.
“and an economic paradigm that exploits the Earth’s resources and marginalizes the poorest.”
The word “paradigm” became one of the most misused corporate buzzwords of the 1990’s (perhaps due to Joel Arthur Barker’s use of the word in “Paradigms: The Business of Discovering the Future Paperback – May 26, 1993”).
In this utterance, it is equally nebulous and imprecise. We don’t live under one “paradigm”, but many. Popes have often commented on the “dismal science” and too often they offer vague complaints that are too easily arrogated by misanthropes masquerading as friends of human flourishing.
Likewise, “marginalizes” is another word devoid of meaning. The greatest ‘marginalization” I see is the importation of vast numbers of uneducated and unskilled who have little chance of doing anything other than maintaining a ready and cheap supply of agricultural and domestic labor and the cultural attack on the family, which ensures the isolation of the individual.
The above quote may be music to the ears of the pseudo-Catholic left; but it won’t do much about the de-Christianization of the West.
Paradigms and paradigm shifts were picked up by business as a buzzword/phrase from Thomas Kuhn’s 1962 “The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions” where he destroyed the idea of science building on all which came before, and showed that each advance was in fact a revolution as old (and its practitioners) was thrown out and new was adopted. So, when people talk of new paradigms or paradigm shifts in business (or religion)….
http://www.mysticprayer.blogspot.com
When I was getting an undergraduate degree in the 1980’s and immersed myself in all the pop business books as an adjunct to formal instruction, never saw the word used to any great degree. By the time I was getting my MBA, it became one of those words that “scream for your submission”.
Any questions I had about the predilection or ability of the chattering classes to brandish a newly deployed word like in an attempt to appear au courant in one of their spasms of ponderous self importance were answered in a few years later during the 2000 election, when the word “gravitas” went from obscurity to ubiquity.
Today the buzzwords and phrases are “diversity” (but not of thought) “equity”, “belonging” “inclusiveness”, “sustainability”, “stakeholders”. In all cases it’s vapid verbal emesis.
Christ established his church for the salvation of souls, not to fix all the world’s problems in the service of mankind. There is only one church, one faith through which one can be saved, the Catholic church. Not ” our sister churches “.
“Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you” – Saint Augustine.
Grateful, CWR, for Pope Leo XIV’s sermon text herein. It’s perfect timing of a Gospel for the Pope’s First homily! I am hopeful; He seems the Good Shepherd, a gentle man, an educated and wise cleric. For Pope Leo and our Clergy, Masses, and Rosary and Divine Mercy prayers continue.🎶